local network access to the gateway completely unreliable

[crackers8199]

i had my powerwalls installed about a month ago, and the network connection to the gateway via wifi has been completely unreliable (strangely enough, some computers can connect to it and some can't, some work at some times but not others, and on and on). the overwhelming recommendation here seems to be "connect it via eithernet, and all your problems will go away."

i have, and they haven't. i bought a wifi access point to use as a bridge, and the TEG is now connected via ethernet...but i'm still having the same issues. some computers on the network can get to it, others can't. no rhyme or reason as to which is which (although now my home assistant install can't see the ethernet connected version, which is messing everything up as far as my data mining goes).

how the hell do i get this thing to work reliably?

 

[GRV0928]

Mine is working great with wifi connection its been running for straight 1 month now, never got disconnected yet, I bought a extra ipad to use the web interface with the gateway, log in with installer instead of customer… i use all unifi network gadget but with separate IOT network… I believe you beed a strong signal to the gateway or run with ethernet cable…

 

[crackers8199]

Mine is working great with wifi connection its been running for straight 1 month now, never got disconnected yet, I bought a extra ipad to use the web interface with the gateway, log in with installer instead of customer… i use all unifi network gadget but with separate IOT network… I believe you beed a strong signal to the gateway or run with ethernet cable…

the signal in my garage is plenty strong, both at the gateway itself as well as at the wireless bridge i have the hard wire connected to. it sucks either way.

 

[BGbreeder]

I am sorry to hear that you are still having issues. I am assuming for the moment that everything else on your WiFi works solidly.

Not to be critical, but wired is wired. Ethernet cable into a wireless repeater is still dependent on your WiFi network. How sure are you that your 2.4GHz network is ok, and not being blanked by a neighbor? Does your 2.4GHz network have a different name from your 5GHz network? Have you checked to see that your WiFi channels are in RF quiet regions, and are either 1/6/11, and that you don't have an odd piece of electronics that might be doing funny things on your 2.4GHz network? (Or even an old microwave?)

Have you reserved a fixed IP address for your gateway? If not, try that. Depending on the make/model of your repeater, there may be an option within it to fix the Ethernet port address on its port, which would also help. Once you fix an address in your router for the gateway, (and make sure that the gateway knows what its address is supposed to be!), shut the gateway down (and the powerwalls), shut the repeater down, and wait for the lights in the gateway to go off, and then power it up.

I have in extreme cases run an ethernet cable through a cracked window just to double check things.

A lot of havoc can be caused by the gateway thinking it is at its first address, and the router reassigning the gateway to a different address via a DHCP lease renewal. My gateway had real network and communication troubles until I figured out that the gateway doesn't play nice with DHCP, and requires a fixed address. YMMV...

All the best,

BG

 

[jjrandorin]

I am sorry to hear that you are still having issues. I am assuming for the moment that everything else on your WiFi works solidly.

Not to be critical, but wired is wired. Ethernet cable into a wireless repeater is still dependent on your WiFi network. How sure are you that your 2.4GHz network is ok, and not being blanked by a neighbor? Does your 2.4GHz network have a different name from your 5GHz network? Have you checked to see that your WiFi channels are in RF quiet regions, and are either 1/6/11, and that you don't have an odd piece of electronics that might be doing funny things on your 2.4GHz network? (Or even an old microwave?)

Have you reserved a fixed IP address for your gateway? If not, try that. Depending on the make/model of your repeater, there may be an option within it to fix the Ethernet port address on its port, which would also help. Once you fix an address in your router for the gateway, (and make sure that the gateway knows what its address is supposed to be!), shut the gateway down (and the powerwalls), shut the repeater down, and wait for the lights in the gateway to go off, and then power it up.

I have in extreme cases run an ethernet cable through a cracked window just to double check things.

A lot of havoc can be caused by the gateway thinking it is at its first address, and the router reassigning the gateway to a different address via a DHCP lease renewal. My gateway had real network and communication troubles until I figured out that the gateway doesn't play nice with DHCP, and requires a fixed address. YMMV...

All the best,

BG

I have mine wired through a bridge as well (well, a router I am using as a mesh access point) but I also assigned it a static IP in my router. I havent had any issues with it that way.

 

[jrweiss98020]

How are you trying to access it? Most reliable way is to find the TEG's IP address in your router's setup screen, then put that into the browser as the URL. I use 192.168.1.90, and always get direct to the login screen.

 

[jjrandorin]

One thing I have noticed is, this specific subforum of TMC has a pretty large amount of technically minded users, even for TMC, which in general Tesla products invite technically minded users imo.

Perhaps its the nature of home energy products like solar and batteries etc, but this subforum in general is full of network engineers, software developers (either professional or hobbyist in their spare time), IT professionals, etc etc... lol.

 

[ptdusn]

One thing I have noticed is, this specific subforum of TMC has a pretty large amount of technically minded users, even for TMC, which in general Tesla products invite technically minded users imo.

Perhaps its the nature of home energy products like solar and batteries etc, but this subforum in general is full of network engineers, software developers (either professional or hobbyist in their spare time), IT professionals, etc etc... lol.

47 years of being an Electronics tech for me. I have my old Samsung Tab A connected directly to the TEG and haven't had any issues.

 

[crackers8199]

I have mine wired through a bridge as well (well, a router I am using as a mesh access point) but I also assigned it a static IP in my router. I havent had any issues with it that way.

i actually have it set up as static on the gateway itself. what router are you using as your bridge? i bought a cheap TP-Link that is supposed to work well as a client bridge (based on reviews), but doesn't seem to work all that well for me in this use case, yet. i'm still within the return period, though...

Not to be critical, but wired is wired. Ethernet cable into a wireless repeater is still dependent on your WiFi network. How sure are you that your 2.4GHz network is ok, and not being blanked by a neighbor? Does your 2.4GHz network have a different name from your 5GHz network? Have you checked to see that your WiFi channels are in RF quiet regions, and are either 1/6/11, and that you don't have an odd piece of electronics that might be doing funny things on your 2.4GHz network? (Or even an old microwave?)

wired is wired, yes, but wireless uplink is plenty stable most of the time now. i've got a unifi network blanketing my entire house (1/6/11). i do have separate SSIDs for my 2.4 and 5ghz networks, but that doesn't seem to be the issue (i tried connecting to only the 2.4 and still had problems).

Have you reserved a fixed IP address for your gateway? If not, try that. Depending on the make/model of your repeater, there may be an option within it to fix the Ethernet port address on its port, which would also help.

as i mentioned above, i actually set it up as static in the gateway's web UI itself. i figured that was an even safer option than messing around with a static lease on my router.

 

[crackers8199]

How are you trying to access it? Most reliable way is to find the TEG's IP address in your router's setup screen, then put that into the browser as the URL. I use 192.168.1.90, and always get direct to the login screen.

this is how i've always tried to access it. i did previously have a static route to the 192.168.91.0/24 network via the local IP address as a gateway...that seemed to work for the most part, but was still not 100% reliable unless i accessed it via 192.168.91.1, rather than the local IP. the frustrating part was that accessing it via 91.1, while more reliable on my local network, was not reliable to my home assistant install for whatever reason. i've yet to find a combination that works all of the time from all devices on the network.

 

[jgleigh]

Electrical engineers...

 

[jjrandorin]

I have some asus routers that I am using in a mesh network setup that asus supports using various routers of theirs. I have never liked actual wireless bridges or extenders myself, since "a long time ago" when I used to do in home network setups, they always caused me the most problems with staying connected.

I have carried that dislike of wireless bridge units with me into the future here, lol. The asus mesh setup allowed me to use a router I had laying around as a bridge though, and I thought I would give it a try.

You likely have a gateway 2, which is different than my gateway 1. Most of the feedback around poor wireless on these I thought was from gateway 1 like I have.

You mention you setup a static IP to the gateway itself, forgive me for the question (I dont mean any offense or anything) but did you also make sure that the static IP you gave it is outside the DHCP range of your router? I qualify the question like that because of what I said earlier (high level of technical users in this subforum), and I want to be clear I am not trying to insult, lol.

 

[BGbreeder]

i actually have it set up as static on the gateway itself. what router are you using as your bridge? i bought a cheap TP-Link that is supposed to work well as a client bridge (based on reviews), but doesn't seem to work all that well for me in this use case, yet. i'm still within the return period, though...



wired is wired, yes, but wireless uplink is plenty stable most of the time now. i've got a unifi network blanketing my entire house (1/6/11). i do have separate SSIDs for my 2.4 and 5ghz networks, but that doesn't seem to be the issue (i tried connecting to only the 2.4 and still had problems).



as i mentioned above, i actually set it up as static in the gateway's web UI itself. i figured that was an even safer option than messing around with a static lease on my router.

Static at the gateway is great, but you need to have a static address at the router to keep the router from handing out that address to another device. Try that. I bet it helps.

All the best,

BG

 

[crackers8199]

I have some asus routers that I am using in a mesh network setup that asus supports using various routers of theirs. I have never liked actual wireless bridges or extenders myself, since "a long time ago" when I used to do in home network setups, they always caused me the most problems with staying connected.

I have carried that dislike of wireless bridge units with me into the future here, lol. The asus mesh setup allowed me to use a router I had laying around as a bridge though, and I thought I would give it a try.

You likely have a gateway 2, which is different than my gateway 1. Most of the feedback around poor wireless on these I thought was from gateway 1 like I have.

You mention you setup a static IP to the gateway itself, forgive me for the question (I dont mean any offense or anything) but did you also make sure that the static IP you gave it is outside the DHCP range of your router?

yep, that's not the issue.

i've thought about getting an actual unifi AP to use as a wireless bridge, but that would require me to reconfigure my entire network (they only allow four SSIDs if using wireless uplink / mesh, and i've currently got five SSIDs running).

 

[crackers8199]

Static at the gateway is great, but you need to have static at the router to keep the router from handing out that address to another device. Try that. I bet it helps.

All the best,

BG

the static i have set on the gateway itself is outside the DHCP range. if it tries to give that to another device, i've got bigger issues.

 

[BGbreeder]

If you have a unifi system, these may help;

All the best,

BG

 

[crackers8199]

If you have a unifi system, these may help;

All the best,

BG

i actually have a pfsense router. i thought about the UDM pro, but i didn't see any benefit to spending $400 on that when i've already got a $300 quad core i5 box running pfsense.

 

[jjrandorin]

yep, that's not the issue.

i've thought about getting an actual unifi AP to use as a wireless bridge, but that would require me to reconfigure my entire network (they only allow four SSIDs if using wireless uplink / mesh, and i've currently got five SSIDs running).

I figured, because you said:

i did previously have a static route to the 192.168.91.0/24 network

And usually only people very familiar with networking will refer to the network in that manner. I asked anyway, because I have found myself troubleshooting something in my day job and going somewhat down a rabbit hole, only to end up finding out "it was the cable" which is something I would check first like 9 times out of 10, but didnt for some reason that time.

 

[crackers8199]

perfect example of what i'm dealing with, right now...the computer i'm typing this reply on can no longer access the bridge or the gateway. my home assistant install still can.

ping stats from my HA server:

--- 192.168.88.225 ping statistics ---
144 packets transmitted, 144 packets received, 1 duplicates, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 2.891/7.045/74.077 ms

 

[jjrandorin]

Anyway... I only have 2 SSIDs (a 2.4 and 5 ghz), and I dont have them firewalled off from each other or anything. I have always ment to setup an IoT network but havent ever gotten around to it.

I will also say that I am not a network engineer, so.....

Based on what you have said so far, the general troubleshooting I would likely be advising would be to ask if you have any of those 4 SSIDs firewalled off between each other, or any other specific firewall rules etc. I would ask you if you have been able to narrow down "devices which cant reach" and "devices which can" to any specific subnet or vlan if you have those.

I would also ask if you have a way to either simplify for testing, or put a device on the same SSID / subnet / vlan that the gateway is on, and see if you continue to have connection issues.